Bio

Vanessa Panfil is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Old Dominion University. She joined ODU after completing a two-year postdoctoral appointment in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University-Newark. She received her PhD from the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany and was the recipient of the University Distinguished Dissertation Award. Her work explores how intersections of gender and sexuality shape individuals’ experiences with gangs, crime, victimization, and the criminal and juvenile justice systems. She coedited, with Dana Peterson, Handbook of LGBT Communities, Crime, and Justice, and she is centrally involved in developing the emerging field of queer criminology. Her book, The Gang’s All Queer: The Social Worlds and Identities of Gay Gang Members, is under contract with NYU Press.